Hi guys, just a heads up to you all that Facebook is doing a scam to some of its users.

A few days ago I was blocked from accessing my account on facebook due to "my computer being infected with malware", and I could spread that malware over facebook and all that. Little did I know that I was actually being shown an ultimatum, download (and run) our "super awesome malware scanner" or say goodbye to your account. I have to say, I felt pretty bad, what kind of company that acts in its user interests does such a thing? Such violation of privacy is outrageous!

I really need facebook, which I mainly use for messenger now, so I ran the damn thing. It "scans" your computer by saving on a temp folder data from your browsers (was the least I could find but there could be more), so this tool, is meant for the sole purpose of spying. I've seen screenshots of it happening ON LINUX users even.

So, be careful, if they do this to you, there are some steps that people say can help unblock your account without running that spy tool:The following methods are independent:

Hopefully it doesn't happen to you guys, this is ridiculous. It's a shame that everyone says bad about facebook and how it's dying and all, but if someone says "here's a solution", nobody gives a sh*t.

I have not seen that. It definitely doesn't sound like them and I would assume this is some sort of scam by a third party. I know you saw the cert, and wow...I don't know how to fake that. But I feel that would have been huge, international news immediately if Facebook tried something like that.

hallsofvallhalla wrote:wow, I will definitely leave facebook if they try that crap on me.

I wish I could, I fell so outraged but I can't.. I use it constantly to message people for both work and personal use, if there was another thing where I have everyone, I would take it.

Jackolantern wrote:I have not seen that. It definitely doesn't sound like them and I would assume this is some sort of scam by a third party. I know you saw the cert, and wow...I don't know how to fake that. But I feel that would have been huge, international news immediately if Facebook tried something like that.

I don't think so because the actual site shows you the progress of the scan, the 2FA code was correct and the content was shown as the progress was being done. It is impossible in my view to "hack" this.

Jackolantern wrote:That first link appears to just be a company blog posting of someone on their team trying to hock their software. I honestly have no clue what the second is.

I really don't know, man. All I know is that myself and everyone I know are all using Facebook the same way we always have, with no hints of anything like this.

The first one is actually facebook-security blog post.. not some 3rd party company. Also the second is just a user showing what happens when the system "blocks you".This started 4-5 years ago and will probably continue/get worst. So.. yeah. Why can't some company create a freaking social network with no intention to steal/sell data, put some adverts here and there and that's it. Like literally the slogan should be "We don't give a F*CK about your data, literally." Ofc, this doesn't mean they don't care about it being stored safely, which needs to happen, but i meant in the sense of selling it for better ad control and all that.

Also, I'm getting really upset on facebook's super cookies.. I can't search anything on the web (product related) without a freaking ad popping up on my feed showing me the same item. Like, yeah I get it, I searched for it in that exact same store.. don't need to shove on my face that you are spying on me jeez.

vitinho444 wrote:Why can't some company create a freaking social network with no intention to steal/sell data, put some adverts here and there and that's it. Like literally the slogan should be "We don't give a F*CK about your data, literally."

Because there would be no money in that. Social networks make their money off of ads. But just seeing ads doesn't pay enough. They have to show ads you may actually click on, and they use your social network data to try to figure out what that is. A social network did actually try to make a "no personal data used" policy called Ello. They claimed they would have no ads and would not collect personal data. Instead they planned on selling special features and options, kind of like social network DLC. For a few weeks articles were being written that it may be a "Facebook killer", but the hype fizzled out pretty quickly. Now they have tried to pivot and brand themselves as a creator's network but it isn't working well.

It will be really hard for anybody to dethrone Facebook as the world's general social network. If not even Google could do it with Google+, you know it is hard to do. The reason is because a social network's value is in how many people it has. Facebook has almost everyone. A start-up general-purpose social network will feel like a ghost town compared to FB. New users will try name after name trying to find people they know and give up. This is what happened to Ello and countless others.

Jackolantern wrote:Because there would be no money in that. Social networks make their money off of ads. But just seeing ads doesn't pay enough. They have to show ads you may actually click on, and they use your social network data to try to figure out what that is. A social network did actually try to make a "no personal data used" policy called Ello. They claimed they would have no ads and would not collect personal data. Instead they planned on selling special features and options, kind of like social network DLC. For a few weeks articles were being written that it may be a "Facebook killer", but the hype fizzled out pretty quickly. Now they have tried to pivot and brand themselves as a creator's network but it isn't working well.

It will be really hard for anybody to dethrone Facebook as the world's general social network. If not even Google could do it with Google+, you know it is hard to do. The reason is because a social network's value is in how many people it has. Facebook has almost everyone. A start-up general-purpose social network will feel like a ghost town compared to FB. New users will try name after name trying to find people they know and give up. This is what happened to Ello and countless others.

True.. but maybe with this new "javascript mining", that could change I know it's hard because of the "everyone I know is here" and even if 1 changes, the others won't follow. It's kind of hard to know that Facebook has the majority of control, so they can pull these stunts and get away with it. Sad.